June 26, 2009

Women’s Fund Celebrates Another Year of the Power of Collective Philanthropy

On June 9, 2009, the Women’s Fund hosted a reception to celebrate its investment in social change with a diverse group of grant partners, donors and volunteers.

The celebration was a recognition of the two recipients of the Lynde Uihlein Award for service to the Women’s Fund--Doris Heiser and Maria Rodriguez.  Doris Heiser, an advocate for women and philanthropy, helped bring the Women’s Fund to the Greater Milwaukee Foundation in 1986 and has been the longest consecutive year donor.  Maria Rodriguez, a Women’s Fund volunteer since 2003, organized Latinas en Acción, a component fund of the Women’s Fund,  to give visibility to Latina leadership and support to organizations making improvements in the Latino community.

For the first time ever, the Women’s Fund started the celebration with a Social Change Exchange --a forum for grant partner leaders to discuss how they are achieving social change during these challenging times.  The exchange began with a panel discussion on the impact of the economic downturn on women and girls-serving nonprofits in the Milwaukee area.  Panelists included Ellen Bravo, founder of Milwaukee 9 to 5, Christine Neumann-Ortiz founder of Voces de la Frontera, and Paula Penebaker, CEO of YWCA of Greater Milwaukee.  Elaine Maly, Executive Director of the Women’s Fund, opened the discussion.  She said, “The current economic crisis disproportionately impacts the lives of women and girls and those nonprofit organizations that serve them, including Women’s Fund grant partners.”  She added, “most discussions on the economic impact, including those regarding the Federal economic recovery plan fail to view this crisis with a gender lens.”

The panelists echoed Elaine Maly’s concerns.  Paula Penebaker and Ellen Bravo noted that “shovel ready” jobs are mostly geared towards men and there simply isn’t enough investment in creating livable wage jobs for women.  Women far outnumber men in poverty.  Currently more women are unemployed or underemployed and homelessness is on the rise with an increase in foreclosures.  Children, who make up the largest group in poverty, suffer the most.  Christine Neumann-Ortiz talked about how immigrant communities are adversely affected in this economy when employers feel as though they can get away with more.  The panelists shared the common belief that there is no single “fix” for poverty.  They were all of the opinion that creating jobs that provide a livable wage along with a social safety net is a step towards breaking the cycle of poverty.

Amanda Schultz representing Core El Centro, a Women’s Fund grant partner, zeroed in on the issue of measuring social change.  The Women’s Fund uses a tool developed by the Women’s Funding Network that is designed to capture outcomes by examining changes over time in five indicators. These indicators or “shifts” measure changes in behavior, policy, definition, engagement, or no shift at all if the challenge was to maintain past gains.  For more information and examples of the gains made by 2008 grant partners visit the Women’s Fund’s 2008 Annual Report (in pdf), which is now available online.

The Women’s Fund remains committed to supporting social change through women and girls.  Addressing the grant partners in the audience, Elaine Maly said, “It’s the social change work that you do that puts your social service out of business. It’s a long road and sometimes hard to see positive outcomes but we all have to start somewhere.”

Pictures:

1. Doris Heiser and friends
2. Maria Rodriguez and her mother
3. Tami Whatley, JoCasta Zamarripa and Sarah Noble